Frontier Looks to Help Take on California’s Digital Divide

Frontier Looks to Help Take on California’s Digital Divide

CED | August 8, 2016

Applying for jobs and college and jobs. Homework. Access to health, education and civic information.

Those topics are often at the top of the conversation about the digital divide as studies pile up indicating the huge disadvantages low-income households face around the lack of easy broadband access. And the stats can be surprising. For example, around 16 percent of California households do not have access to high-speed Internet, according to the "2016 Annual Survey on Home Broadband Adoption in California" by the Field Research Corp.

According to the Field poll, California groups reporting the lowest levels of home broadband connectivity (including those using a smartphone only) are adults who have not graduated from high school (63 percent), seniors age 65 or older (56 percent), adults who identify having a disability (71 percent), Spanish-speaking Latinos (69 percent) and households whose total annual income is less than $20,000 (68 percent).